Survey Shows How Americans Really Feel About Driverless Cars

Would you consider driving a driverless car like Google’s newest vehicle?

The automotive industry is in a race to create driverless cars—but are consumers ready to purchase them?

This is exactly the question one insurance firm was looking to answer. To figure out how Americans truly felt about autonomous vehicles, CheapCarInsurance.net decided to survey 2,000 US citizens—and this survey revealed some very interesting insights into our country’s driving habits.

Eight out of 10 respondents appeared to be excited about driverless car technology, though of those eight, five seemed to have certain reservations about the tech. In addition, a greater number of the survey takers said that they would definitely buy a driverless car than those that said they wouldn’t.

Even more interesting was the fact that men were about 20% more likely to buy a driverless car than women.

Despite the fact that it appears the majority of drivers are interested in autonomous technology, there are still a lot of people who have reservations on allowing artificially intelligent technology take the wheel. When asked if they believed artificial intelligence can be trusted more than human intelligence, 43.27% of survey takers said “No,” while 37.31% weren’t sure. This is a huge percentage compared to the 19.42% of participants who said that artificial intelligence could be trusted.

Overall, though, it looks like one of the most important pieces of information to garner from this survey was that Americans do believe that driverless cars can minimize death tolls. A resounding 54.8% said that it absolutely can, while 38.25% responded, “Yes, but only if it means those inside the car are not put at risk.”

In conclusion, the insurance company decided that Americans are unsure about the trustworthiness of driverless car technology. Hopefully, carmakers will keep this in mind as they proceed to introduce more and more autonomous technologies.